Intel unveils new chips

by
Robert McMillan
, | 08 Sep 03

Intel will today take the wraps off of two new Itanium 2 processors designed for both dual-processor and high-density blade or rack-mount servers.

The most widely anticipated of the two chips will be Intel's low-power 1GHz Itanium 2 processor, code named Deerfield. It will perform at about the same rate as Intel's older McKinley processors, but at peak performance it will consume about half as much power – 62 watts – as its predecessor, according to Intel's director of multiprocessor platform marketing, Jason Waxman. "What that allows you to do is apply these processors for dense, rack-mounted configurations," he said.

Also scheduled for release today is a new member of Itanium's Madison family, designed for dual processor use in high performance and technical computing. The 1.4 GHz processor will have a smaller cache and lower price tag than the three current members of the Madison family, all of which were released as a follow up to the McKinley chips last June.

The new chips will begin shipping in a number of systems on Monday, including computers from Dell, HP and IBM.